This famous speech was given by the Athenian leader Pericles after the
first battles of the Peloponnesian war. Funerals after such battles were public
rituals and Pericles used the occasion to make a classic statement of the value
of democracy. It is probably not an exact quote, but a composition by
Thucydides representing the recollections of witnesses.

In the same winter the Athenians gave a funeral at the public cost to those
who had first fallen in this war. It was a custom of their ancestors, and the
manner of it is as follows. Three days before the ceremony, the bones of the
dead are laid out in a tent which has been erected; and their friends bring to
their relatives such offerings as they please. In the funeral procession
cypress coffins are borne in cars, one for each tribe; the bones of the
deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one
empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be
recovered. Any citizen or stranger who pleases, joins in the procession: and
the female relatives are there to wail at the burial. The dead are laid in the
public sepulchre in the Beautiful suburb of the city, in which those who fall
in war are always buried; with the exception of those slain at Marathon, who
for their singular and extraordinary valour were interred on the spot where
they fell. After the bodies have been laid in the earth, a man chosen by the
state, of approved wisdom and eminent reputation, pronounces over them an
appropriate panegyric; after which all retire. Such is the manner of the
burying; and throughout the whole of the war, whenever the occasion arose, the
established custom was observed. Meanwhile these were the first that had
fallen, and Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was chosen to pronounce their
eulogium. When the proper time arrived, he advanced from the sepulchre to an
elevated platform in order to be heard by as many of the crowd as possible, and
spoke as follows:

Most of my predecessors in this place have commended him who
made this speech part of the law, telling us that it is well that it should be
delivered at the burial of those who fall in battle. For myself, I should have
thought that the worth which had displayed itself in deeds would be
sufficiently rewarded by honours also shown by deeds; such as you now see in
this funeral prepared at the people's cost. And I could have wished that the
reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a
single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it
is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince
your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who
is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been
set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the
other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect
exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to
hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of
their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed,
envy comes in and with it incredulity. However, since our ancestors have
stamped this custom with their approval, it becomes my duty to obey the law and
to try to satisfy your several wishes and opinions as best I may.

I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they
should have the honour of the first mention on an occasion like the present.
They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to
generation, and handed it down free to the present time by their valour. And if
our more remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who
added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains
to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present generation. Lastly,
there are few parts of our dominions that have not been augmented by those of
us here, who are still more or less in the vigour of life; while the mother
country has been furnished by us with everything that can enable her to depend
on her own resources whether for war or for peace. That part of our history
which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions,
or of the ready valour with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of
Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to
dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by. But what was the road by which we
reached our position, what the form of government under which our greatness
grew, what the national habits out of which it sprang; these are questions
which I may try to solve before I proceed to my panegyric upon these men; since
I think this to be a subject upon which on the present occasion a speaker may
properly dwell, and to which the whole assemblage, whether citizens or
foreigners, may listen with advantage.

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are
rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours
the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look
to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if
no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for
capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor
again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not
hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our
government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a
jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry
with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those
injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no
positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us
lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to
obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection
of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to
that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged
disgrace.

Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from
business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the
elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and
helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce
of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other
countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our
antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts
exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the
eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in
system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in
education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline
seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just
as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this it may be
noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not invade our country alone, but bring with
them all their confederates; while we Athenians advance unsupported into the
territory of a neighbour, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish
with ease men who are defending their homes. Our united force was never yet
encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and
to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that,
wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against
a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a
reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not
of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still
willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the
experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need
as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.

Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We
cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy;
wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of
poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our
public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our
ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still
fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who
takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians
are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking
on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an
indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises
we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to
its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually
decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of
courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the
difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink
from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by
conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour
is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the
recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very
consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And
it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits
not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if
the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is
equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the
Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain
matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For
Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her
reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the
antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her
title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding
ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have
shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or
other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the
impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every
sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil
or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for
which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly
fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer
in her cause.

Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country, it
has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who
have no such blessings to lose, and also that the panegyric of the men over
whom I am now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That panegyric
is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens that I have celebrated is
only what the heroism of these and their like have made her, men whose fame,
unlike that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their
deserts. And if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their closing
scene, and this not only in cases in which it set the final seal upon their
merit, but also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having
any. For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country's
battles should be as a cloak to cover a man's other imperfections; since the
good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than
outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none of these allowed either
wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty
with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from
danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired
than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of
hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their
vengeance, and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the
uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to
act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than
to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face,
and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not
from their fear, but from their glory.

So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine
to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it
may have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas derived only from words
of the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your country, though
these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so
alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens,
and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your
hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect
that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action
that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an
enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour,
but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could
offer. For this offering of their lives made in common by them all they each of
them individually received that renown which never grows old, and for a
sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that
noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered
upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration.
For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their
own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every
breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the
heart. These take as your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of
freedom and freedom of valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not
the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have
nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring
reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most
tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation
of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which
strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!

Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents
of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know,
the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their
lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom
life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it
has been passed. Still I know that this is a hard saying, especially when those
are in question of whom you will constantly be reminded by seeing in the homes
of others blessings of which once you also boasted: for grief is felt not so
much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which
we have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of an age to beget children
must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead; not only will they
help you to forget those whom you have lost, but will be to the state at once a
reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected
of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the
interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed
your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of
your life was fortunate, and that the brief span that remains will be cheered
by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows
old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart
of age and helplessness.

Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle
before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your
merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to
overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend
with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill
into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on
the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood,
it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in
not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is
least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad.

My task is now finished. I have performed it to the best of my ability, and
in word, at least, the requirements of the law are now satisfied. If deeds be
in question, those who are here interred have received part of their honours
already, and for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at
the public expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize, as the garland of
victory in this race of valour, for the reward both of those who have fallen
and their survivors. And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are
found the best citizens.

And now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your
relatives, you may depart.